The fixing of top football matches: how it works and why it is not reported

By Tony Attwood There are two prime ways in which top football matches are fixed. One is the gambling model where people bribe players or refs to fix a game in a particular way, and bet on the outcome. The other is a much more complex system and is often known as Calciopoli after the Italian …

The curious case of an ARSENAL selfie.

ARSENAL 13.   After the ManCity victory Rambo tweets a pic of himself, Giroud, Ox and Per-fect Mertesacker. This was followed by Alexis Selfie or whatever they call it, which sends Liverpool legend into a rantorgasm. He sure loves that, doesn’t he. Understandable he is annoyed seeing ARSENAL win, but this outburst wasn’t necessary. Though …

FA Youth Cup Fourth Round: the match report

FA Youth Cup Fourth Round  Arsenal v Royston Town (2 – 1) Wednesday 21 January   Match Report by Andrew Crawshaw   Royston is a small town bordering Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire population 16,000 approx.  Their Football team are known as the Crows and play non-league football in the Southern League Division One Central.  The club …

Switzerland take a greater interest in Fifa – at last

By Tony Attwood As you may have seen, I’ve taken quite an interest in the Barcelona child trafficking case since Fifa first ruled on it. In one of my comments however I suggested that although Fifa had very much done the right thing in the cases against Barcelona and the Spanish FA, we couldn’t be …

For once, an Untold prediction is right: 6.5 years of Francis Coquelin

By Tony Attwood Francis Coquelin’s agent is now negotiating a new deal for the player at Arsenal, what with his contract running out at the end of the season. Meanwhile the story of Coquelin runs in two different ways depending on whose version you read.  Either Arsenal stumbled from crisis to crisis plucking players here …

The PGMO v Arsenal: the half time report part

This continues our series of articles reviewing the way referees have affected Arsenal games.  Part one of the review is here. The PGMO v Arsenal – the Half Time Report by Andrew Crawshaw This is a series of articles that review the first 19 weeks of the season, who were the referees, were they Good, …

He’s not fit to…

NOT FIT TO……..Domhnal MacMagthamhna The subject of this article is, of course, all our useless deadwood and second rate management that, season-in,season-out, fail to achieve the lofty summits of the Invincibles and who, to boot, are lazy, overpaid and slothful regardless of actual reality. I wanted to review some of these lesser beings in the …

Coquelin comes of age, Santi comes in from the cold.

By Walter Broeckx Usually you get my match report shortly after the match. But this time I couldn’t do this. So it is about more than the match as the match details have been talked over and over again I think.  As you may know I am the president of the Arsenal Belgium supporters club …

Three comparative Arsenal tactical reviews. Part 1 Arsenal v Liverpool

Arvind I haven’t written for a while for a number of reasons, and felt like writing again recently. As older readers probably (hopefully☺) remember, I tend to focus on the actual football and take a fairly microscopic look at the truth on the football field. Who really did well and who did not, and why? …

Man City – Arsenal, the late match report

By Walter Broeckx After having the fastest match report on an Arsenal blog this is now the slowest match report on an Arsenal blog I think. Arsenal started with Ospina, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Ramsey, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Cazorla, Alexis, Giroud. And on the cold beach in Manchester we had Szczesny, Gibbs, Chambers, Flamini, Rosicky, Ozil, …

Man City 0-2 ARSENAL: player ratings.

By Navnit Man City 0-2 ARSENAL: player ratings. Arsene doesn’t do tactics. He is stubborn. ARSENAL will lose 3 nil. ARSENAL will lose 3-1. ARSENAL lose big games. Its down to the manager, he is responsible for all the big defeats. He is the past. We should look to the future. And when we win …

So what do we mean by defending better?

So what do we mean by defending better? Richard Bedwell For most people the answer is simple – concede, across the season, fewer goals than you did last season. However, judging by comments on the vast majority of blogs, people don’t think over such long periods as a season, or certainly not while that season …

The PGMO v Arsenal – the Half Time Report; part 1

The PGMO v Arsenal – the Half Time Report by Andrew Crawshaw This is a review of the first 19 weeks of the season, who were the referees, were they Good, Bad or Downright Ugly and any other points I consider relevant.  I am using Walter’s referee reviews as my source document and will post …

Was that the moment when the press got it right, or are they just boasting?

 By Tony Attwood The Guardian today has a bold headline: “Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend action Guardian”.  And not a single one of those talking points relates to Arsenal.  Disappointing, but I wonder if they were just being honest; they had called it wrong, and were backing off. The Independent however follows …

Man C v Arsenal. The silence of the sheep.

By Tony Attwood I only have one shirt that carries an Arsenal player’s name.  It is in the red of the original Woolwich team, and has a picture of Pires on the front and the “7” on the back.  It is my lucky shirt. I wear it rarely, for fear that wearing it too much …

Man C 16 Arsenal 2 (Corners; Arsenal win 2-0 on goals)

By Tony Attwood (Walter is busy on family matters) Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes …

Manchester Accountants v Arsenal: a tale of two systems

By Bulldog Drummond Manchester Accountants is part of a financial organisation which aims to spread its cultural and economic influence worldwide. It already has bases in Australia, New York and Manchester, and is now looking to move into phase two, which involves taking over disused and abandoned venues built for the world cup, and placing …

What exactly was Barcelona accused of by Fifa, and why does it frighten the British press?

By Tony Attwood . The International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS), is a charitable organisation that proposes and supports International Safeguards for Children in Sport.   Its reports estimates that there are maybe 15,000 trafficked child players in Europe from the age of 11 upwards. . And the situation is growing worse. . They boys have been …

Manchester City v Arsenal – 18 January The Match Officials. It’s Dean. It will not be balanced

By Andrew Crawshaw Firstly the ‘Table of Shame’ following Walter’s Review of the QPR game – a 2-1 win so there couldn’t be much to complain about from the referee – WRONG. Mr Atkinson again showed his complete inability to referee an Arsenal game in an honest fashion.  His overall score (weighted for importance of decisions) …

Transfer inventors now claim they can read your mind

By Tony Attwood Ninetyeight percent of transfer rumours turn out to be useless in revealing transfers that will happen. So how can the various newspaper and blog sites that actually produce the stories keep going?  After all, any other future prediction operations which had a success rate of only two percent would have been laughed …

Ref review West Ham – Arsenal

Ref for this match was Neil Swarbrick The first minute the ref should have booked O Brien who came in frontal towards Monreal. In control but surely with studs showing over the ground. A booking would have been the only correct call even in the first minute. Minutes later a very important call to make …

FA applies UKIP approach to football.

By Tony Attwood The Football Association is determined to be, well, that slightly bit odd, in its thinking. Let’s imagine for a moment that you ran the FA and were concerned that in recent tournaments both the English national team and the under 21s team had been knocked out of the big event in the …

Arsenal welcomes… a bald Eagle…. also known as Bielik.

By Walter Broeckx I do speak and understand a few languages but Polish is not one of them. However someone informed me that an interesting article appeared on the website of Legia Warsaw. It said: “Bielik przejdzie testy medyczne w Arsenalu Autor: Krystian Grzelak Fot. Jacek Prondzynski Legia Warszawa wyraziła zgodę na udział Krystiana Bielika …

Bizarre survey results, Arry attacked, Arsenal to buy Dortmund

By Tony Attwood It’s a funny ol’ game. The surprising headline of the day comes in the Telegraph, normally rather pally with our old mate Arry the Red and his dog Rosie. “Stop playing the blame game, Harry – if QPR are relegated it’s nobody’s fault but your own” the headline writer screams while also …